Roadway Profile Modeled by Polynomials to Minimize Earthwork Cost

M. S. Aljohani^*[1], A. A. Moreb

Department of Nuclear Eng., KAAU, P.O. Box 80204, Jeddah, 21589 Saudi Arabia

Industrial & Management Systems Engineering, Kuwait University, P. Box 5969 Safat 13060 Kuwait

Abstract

The most recent development in roadway design was representing the road profile by piece-wise-linear grade lines, followed by representing the new road profile by a quadratic function.  Quadratic representation had solved the problem of sharp connectivity points that existed in piece-wise-linear grade lines.

In this paper higher order polynomials are used to fit the road profile; it preserved the smoothness of the quadratic model while maintaining linearity.  The model maintains the same efficiency as was obtained by both the piece-wise-linear model and the quadratic one. Moreover, the polynomial model gives a much lower cost than that obtained by all previous models.

Keywords: Linear programming; Transportation; Earthwork allocation; Roadway grades